


no one will catch us (so we'll catch ourselves)

by singingtomysoul



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Families of Choice, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-02-25 18:04:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2631125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingtomysoul/pseuds/singingtomysoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"It's usually who you fall in love with," Mac instructs, like they're not the same age and he's just bigger. "Father Allen says the names are a gift from God to make it easier to find the right path. That's why it's called a soulmate - because it reminds you that you have a soul."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dennis and Deandra Reynolds - Age Three

Barbara finds Dennis staring hard at his arm when he's three, brow furrowed, lips forming around sounds. He reads out 'duh, dah, daa," the same way he did when he'd first learned to walk and he'd toddle around the house calling his sister's name. Barbara scolds him for getting dirty, and gives him a bath even though he whines he just had one, scrubbing until he's pink. She's mad the rest of the day, even though she says she isn't, even though she won't tell him why.

It takes Dee a few weeks longer because she can't rely on that first sound, has to learn how the letters run together. When Barbara reaches for her she kicks and runs off, shrieking out giggles, and she hides in the downstairs storage room with her brother until Barbara pops a pill and goes to bed complaining of a headache. 

The next morning, bleary-eyed and ill-tempered, Barbara slaps her and says it's for being selfish. Dee's already forgotten the day before. She can't remember what she's done.

They only hear their parents argue about it once - a lot of things they don't understand about twins already being creepy, about weird grandchildren. "It's all a bunch of crap anyway," Frank barks. "You don't get anything handed to you for free." By the time they learn what the names on their arms mean, no one has talked about it for years. Every time their father puts them in competition (with a prize he ends up keeping for himself), the names inked in their skin are a secret balm, a comfort - not the reason it's happening to begin with. 

When they kiss for the first time under a New Jersey boardwalk, Dennis curls his fingers possessively around where he's branded on Dee's skin, and she knows there's one thing that always gets to be hers, one thing her mother can't rip away from her even though she's tried and tried again.


	2. Charlie Kelly and Ronnie Macdonald - Age Six

Ronnie helps him read the name on his arm for the first time, urging him on even when Charlie pronounces it wrong, or reads the C backwards as an S. M-a-c, like mac and cheese, or the song about a dude with a knife.

Ronnie's mouth twists in frustration, before he announces, "It's still my name. See? Here's yours" He pulls up his sleeve to read the letters, sounding them out rounded and slow like Charlie's still a baby. 

Charlie scowls. "I know my name, dude. And it could be some other Charlie."

"No, it's you!" he insists. "Mac like Macdonald. Because I hate 'Ronald', and Mac sounds big and tough, like a badass name. I bet I kick a lot of ass when I'm grown up. I bet I have a black belt and ride a motorcycle and protect you from the bad people."

"Bad people?"

"I don't know. Ninjas and stuff."

Charlie wants to ask him how he knows, but the truth is it was like this right away. There are two kinds of kids. Some kids who have been friends since forever meet in their strollers or at the playground. Their moms chat about grown-up stuff and then set up playdates, until being friends was just a thing you'd always done, before you could even talk. 

Some kids are thrown outside to play and they meet their best friend throwing rocks at trash piles, or breaking bottles. They explore abandoned storefronts and walk along railroad tracks, and the only rule is that you never ask to go play at their house. And forever feels even longer then, because you didn't need help finding each other, and it's way scarier thinking about what it would be like if you were apart.

"It's usually who you fall in love with," Mac instructs, like they're not the same age and he's just bigger. "Father Allen says the names are a gift from God to make it easier to find the right path. That's why it's called a soulmate - because it reminds you that you have a soul."

"Then why are we two boys?"

Mac frowns. "He says ones like that are a test."

"Why do some people get a gift and some people get a test?"

"I don't make the stupid rules!" Mac snaps, and suddenly he's very engrossed in poking the rags they'd set on fire with a long stick.

Charlie shrugs. "Well. Then it's the mate part. Like if I were a pirate on a ship, you'd be my first mate."

"I guess," Mac grumbles, gone quiet now, biting his lower lip.

"I wouldn't want to kiss you anyway. Your clothes always smell like cigarettes 'cause of your mom. And kissing's gross."

"Yeah," he agrees, but he's only half-listening, and then he goes quiet for a long time.


	3. Dennis and Deandra Reynolds - Age Fourteen

The joke is that if you ever try to hit on Deandra Reynolds, her brother will come beat you up.

It's a joke because Dennis Reynolds had the shit kicked out of him at least once a year since third grade, for calling the other wealthy kids "plebes" when they were better off than his trashy noveau riche dad. Then Dee punched some guy's teeth out, and now no one talks about either of them where they can hear.

The Reynolds twins come as a set, and if anyone suggests otherwise they'll just stare until the offender remembers themselves. They communicate with private looks, with half-sentences that call up a lifetime of inside jokes. They can make each other run hot or cold with a touch on the arm.

Dee runs with the cool kids at the mall - at least until the back brace, when the impaired mobility means she can't shoplift anything they ask her to. Dennis has perfected the art of flirting with half the neighborhood, though it never seems to go past a few dates. They have lives of their own, they joke, laughing artificially. They're not the McPoyle kids, after all. Being a twin, it's just special. Everyone knows that.

Dee breaks Ingrid Nelson's leg when she's fourteen. She shoves too hard and Ingrid falls down wrong, something cracking audibly as she tries to grab for a desk chair. "Jesus Christ, what is WRONG with you?" Ingrid hisses, and Dee considers yanking her hair out for good measure until she hears her mother hurrying up the stairs. 

Dennis goes to see his twin the second he hears, knowing he'll find her eyes red-rimmed from crying. She glares fireballs at him from where she's hugging her knees on the bed, daring him to say something, but he's never turned down a dare from her anyway.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Don't say a goddamn word," Dee snaps, hugging herself harder. "You don't even know."

"I know all they need is one good reason to ship you off somewhere. Boarding school, or one of those teen reform places in the Carribbean with no laws -"

"Dad wouldn't spend that kind of money on me," she mutters, but her voice is softer and she's staring down at the bedspread.

"He would if Mom yelled loud enough."

"We were fighting," Dee tells him with a sigh, twisting the fabric in her hands. "I flirted with some guy she liked. She always gets too freaked out to go near them, and she's too fat anyway, who's going to be interested in her? And she said -" Dee's nails dig into the sheets. "What did I need to date for, no one will look at me, but it doesn't matter because I have my creepy Flowers in the Attic shit -"

"Jesus Christ, Dee, she didn't MEAN it."

"How do you know, asshole?" She looks up at him pointedly. "How many girls have you dumped once they say shit about me?"

"As many as I needed to. It lets me cultivate a playboy image, anyway."

Dee laughs. "Oh is THAT what you think it does? Lean, pretty boy wearing foundation, never sticks around? Let me explain something to you."

"Shut up." 

He sits beside her to lay a hand on her arm, on his name written there. Like the scruff of a cat's neck, he feels her go calm and still. 

"You're better than that bitch," he insists, voice soft and low. She was never as good at hiding the rage, so he'd learned the right tone to soothe her, like a wounded animal. "You settled for her. You're going to come out of that brace like a goddamn phoenix goddess, and you don't need the smell of whale fat on your hands. Or cigarettes, by the way." He frowns. "Or a criminal record, or half the crap you keep trying to do."

"Mom doesn't want me to be her kid anyway, who gives a shit?"

"You're my sister before you're Mom's daughter. You decided that, WE decided that, together."

"That doesn't mean I answer to you," Dee snaps, hugging her free arm around herself. "You don't decide what I am."

"Of course I don't." His diction turns careful, like he's speaking of something mysterious and grand. "Something bigger than us decided, Dee. It decided before we were born. Romulus and Remus created the greatest nation in the world - do you think we're meant for anything less?" 

He's deadly serious as the grip on her arm tightens, a press of fingertips that would look intimidating if she didn't know him - if she didn't know he'd clung to her like that since they were old enough to walk. 

"Dennis, you don't get it. You never get the worst of her shit, because you still care about looking the part. Mom still thinks she can turn you into her-"

"Mom threatened to disinherit me, Dee."

The words linger there like a presence, and she wonders if this is how he sees things all the time - like that something bigger he talks about is always just out of reach, hovering, ready to cut.

"Jesus, Dennis."

"She didn't do it. But she'd never threatened that before, and I believe her, and that's -" His grip on her arm tightens, painfully, before he remembers himself and pulls away. "This is ours. This should all belong to us, by right."

"Well clearly it never did," she snaps, and she's surprised at the aching feeling it gives her. How after years of quiet resentment that he still had a chance, the thought of Dennis not winning it in the end for their trouble - the house, the money, all the STUFF that started as a bribe and ended as a punishment - that's enough to make her want to set fires. 

He'd have given it to her. They'd have lived there together.

"It's not too late," Dee says quickly. "We're still just kids."

"That's why you need to lay low. Dee, if they have an excuse to split us up..." He shakes his head at the thought, and he doesn't have to say what would happen if he was left alone in his own head. It'd probably happen to her, too. 

"Goddamnit, just - why the hell is it on me? Play her dumb game, be the good twin. Pretend you barely know me. If you get that money, it's all going to be worth it someday."

"None of it's really mine," he says, petulant.

Dee feels like her eyes are going to roll out of her skull. "It must be so fucking hard, not being a mistake until you earn it."

"They could always take it away from us. Whenever they wanted. You're the only thing that's really mine, Dee."

They've said it a dozen times, but never out loud. Her eyes fall to his arm, to her name there, and she resists the urge to comfort him when she's still angry - at him, at Ingrid Nelson, at this place - 

"So you can't sabotage this. Because loving you is exhausting, Dee, it's goddamn exhausting -"

Before he can take it back, before she can feign not hearing it, the smile blooms slowly over her face.


	4. Charlie Kelly and Mac Macdonald - Age Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some very lightly implied molestation/attempted molestation in this part. (Uncle Jack, etc.)

They trace time by where they're living, even though their houses are just a block apart. 

Mac's dad goes to prison when they're seven, and for three months his mom goes quiet, sitting in a chair and staring at nothing. She doesn't shower or change clothes, cuts her hair even shorter one day and says nothing about it. She can barely microwave Mac a grilled cheese. 

So he wanders over to Charlie's house, where Bonnie fixes them something weird but delicious via crock pot. He crashes in their basement on a futon she covers in plastic, a cleaner spot than anywhere in his entire house. He and Charlie fall asleep there together, curled up together to keep warm. His mom doesn't seem to notice he's been gone.

Uncle Jack moves back into Charlie's place when he's nine, to help pay the rent. It's only a few days before Charlie is at Mac's door, blanket and pillow in hand, saying he snuck out in the middle of the night. Mac's mom has graduated to single words and grunts, and she doesn't say no. 

Mac's bed is small and grubby, like the rest of his place, but Charlie is small and grubby too. And they've gotten good at curling up together by now. Sometimes Charlie whines and tenses up in his sleep, like some twitchy animal; Mac hugs him until he goes still. They know better than to talk about it.

They grow up together. That's something everyone says, but Mac and Charlie really _mean_ it - they're each other's phantom limbs, conjoined twins from different parents. It's cute when they're six or seven. By the time they're ten someone tries to make fun, but Mac pops him in the face and Charlie sits on him, smelling like a gutted hobo, until the kid begs forgiveness.

They wear each other's names like a war banner, a source of pride. There will always be someone - someone to look after them, someone to defend them. Someone to talk to in the dark when they can't sleep. Who else on their street can really say that?

That's why Mac doesn't want to ask him at first. There are too many reasons not to mess stuff up, and if they're going to be together then it can't be weird. Not even a little. He waits one year, then two, until the urge keeps biting at him like that time Poppins gave them fleas. 

Then he asks if Charlie wants to try it.

Charlie avoids his mom's obsessive scrubbing whenever he can, so in spite of her efforts he still smells like someone who's never heard of soap or toothpaste. His whole face scrunches up like a bug just flew up his nose. "Kissing's gross." 

Mac looks stubbornly at his shoes, trying to ignore the heat moving through his cheeks and down his neck. Kissing's gross when you're a baby. Kids are already bragging now about sex they haven't really had, and Charlie doesn't want to make this weird any more than he does. "I don't know, dude, fuck it. I just thought..."

"It's hot and sticky and then they get pissed when you try and move away. I don't even like hugging unless it's you."

"Well, it IS me. I just wanted to know what it was like." Mac's tongue flicks over his bottom lip, and he looks back up with his teeth in a nevous clench. "Goddamnit, Charlie."

"What did I do?"

"Just - goddamnit." Suddenly this is the hardest thing in the world. His stomach is hot and swimming, he wants to fall down a hole and disappear, and Charlie has no idea how hard it is, he never will-

Then Charlie does kiss him. He leans up with the clumsy insistence of someone who's never done it before, or at least was never the one to start. It's all wet and teeth and fetid breath. Their noses knock, and Mac yelps and nearly pulls away, but Charlie mutters an apology and holds Mac's head in place as he mashes their lips together. (He'd learned that's how you do it, he says later, and Mac doesn't ask how.)

It's a weird, ugly thing that makes his stomach twist up inside, and Mac's head is still buzzing when they pull apart. He'd just wanted to try it, this thing people say he and Charlie probably do. He'd just wanted to find out it sucks and it's dumb, so he could really know for sure. 

It's not even that he liked it all that much, it's just - something, all fluttering around in his brain, making it hard to think -

"Gross," Charlie mutters, scrubbing at his mouth with a grubby sleeve. He catches a glimpse of Mac's face and adds: "Not you, not you're gross, it's always gross, I told you."

Mac flinches, wrapping his arms around himself. There are suddenly a few very interesting rocks in the dirt at his feet. "It's because we're both boys, probably. It's not supposed to feel good."

"Because it's a test?"

"Whatever." Mac's silent for a second, and then: "I should go home."

His arms are still wrapped tight around him, and he's moving away quick, before Charlie can say anything else, feet crunching on the gravel. Charlie hurries after him, a tiny hand catching his sleeve. 

"You're my first mate."

"Shut the fuck up, Charlie," Mac snaps.

"You shut up." Charlie punches his arm, right where the name is written. It's barely hard enough for anything to register, but Mac still yelps at the little shock that spot always makes him feel, the warmth that spreads down it after. Charlie tugs his sleeve hard, until Mac turns around to see the smaller boy glaring up at him. He keeps his hand on the spot where his name is branded.

"Just because I don't want to kiss you doesn't mean I don't love you."

Mac has a hundred comebacks for this, for the times people made fun of them, for the times they didn't but he made up the insults in his head. What comes out is: "It's not the same thing."

"Screw you, dude. Yes, it is."

Mac shakes his head. "I'm not-"

"We're supposed to be together the rest of our lives. Yeah we are, dude. You are. So are you going back home to your mom's tonight, or not?"

Mac never does give an answer, but Charlie doesn't make him go home. They share the futon in Mrs. Kelly's basement like they have every night for the past two months, and Charlie's arm is wrapped around his waist like it's been every night since he can remember.

They continue on like nothing happened the next day. But it's not like they're pretending it didn't. Some things can't be undone once they've started. Sometimes, that's all it takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very aware it's been LITERALLY FOREVER since I actually wrote a chapter in this, but it's one of those stories that's always on my mind and has never really left. I've got the entire thing planned out, and the goal is to keep writing as much and as well as I can until I see it through, because if I don't write unnecessary trope-y AU fic for these four menaces to society then who will?


	5. Dennis and Deandra Reynolds - Age Sixteen

"I have big plans for high school, Dee. I have _ideas_."

"You've said."

Dennis has been watching what feels like every 80s high school film ever made. He ignores the underdog, focusing on the popular kid with the letterman jacket and the sneering grin. He takes notes on haircut and posture, on how to sound superior and intimidating all at once.

"Those characters are usually the villains," Dee points out, "and they usually get their asses handed to them."

"Irrelevant. I can improve on this." His handwriting is neat and just slightly effeminate, line after line of crisp rounded letters charting an inevitable rise to glory. "Most of these men are bullies, and that's when they turn thuggish. They start making enemies, their subjects rebel."

"You're doing that thing again. You don't sound mysterious or cool right now, you sound like an idiot." Dennis waves her off impatiently, but he lets her sit down next to him, his eyes still on the screen. "You always do this," Dee insists, "and it screws us both over. You're the one who told me to lay low, right? We don't need to be powerful. We just need to be _good_."

"You keep forgetting who you are. We can have both." Dennis gestures sweepingly to some scene in the film indistinguishable from the last three he'd watched. His voice is tight and precise with focus. "We'll be benevolent rulers, Dee. They'll be begging to serve as minions under our guiding hand. Once my plan comes together-" 

"Your plan, huh?" she says dryly.

Suddenly, as if realizing how much he's giving away, he cups a hand protectively around the notebook he's using. But Dee ignores it for the real prize, snatching up the first of the two folders he has lying next to him.

"Goddamni - haven't you ever heard of privacy?" He grabs at it, eyes flashing dangerously.

"Nope, not from me." Dee scoots over on the couch further away from him, holding it just out of his reach. He butts against her in frustration, but he can't get over the bulk of her scoliosis brace.

"Dee, I swear to God -"

"You haven't believed in God since you were six." She riffles her thumb through the corner of the pages, still not opening the front cover. "Hmm. I bet I can name everything in here without opening it once."

Dennis has kept the folders since they were in elementary school. They were like diaries, he said, but better. They were information, they were things to remember. He was going to be with Dee the rest of his life, so they needed to know everything about each other. At first he showed her the photos, the lists, the lines he copied out of her favorite books. Every birthday and Christmas present promised to them and then stolen away by their father, tallied like an inventory. Over the years he's written more and revealed less and less. When she asks he gets cagey, his eyes dart around the room like a nervous animal.

It's funny how he thinks he could ever shock her.

Dee watches his hands slowly tighten into fists, then uncurl again. Dennis takes a slow breath, and she feels a crooked shiver of triumph down her spine. The movie keeps playing, ignored.

"Did I grab your file or mine?"

"Yours," he says tightly.

"Okay, so - first page, dossier, obviously. There's a little chart tracking the progress of the brace to make sure it's fixing my shit on schedule. Recent picture, maybe the last school photo. You liked my hair that day and you're obsessed with keeping these things up to date. Next page is the table of contents, because you need to keep your shit tidy or the books they write about you might take liberties."

"About us," he corrects her, like always.

"Three-four-five is 'under the hood' stuff, ways to make me happy or piss me off. Maybe a diagnosis you know the name of because you read half a psych book last year and wouldn't shut up about it. Then you probably took inventory of my closet and what colors make my eyes pop, you'll have that page in yours too, by the way-"

Dennis is all frustrated squirming, but she's not done. She could probably list the whole thing and then half a dozen pages he hasn't thought of. She keeps her voice steady and free of venom, because this isn't a judgment. It's not an exposure. It's just that sometimes he forgets how much she understands. 

"You don't start the creepy shit until around page eight, because by then most people have gotten bored and wandered off. So that's where you keep the plan for after the brace comes off, that stuff you always tell me about. About how I'll make my debut. And you've planned every step, probably, what I wear and the clubs I try out for. Who I'll take to prom, like it's a movie. And everyone will already know how amazing _you_ are, so you'll make sure they all see."

Sometimes Dee needs to redirect him, because it's not that Dennis stops thinking of her, of how unstoppable they'll be someday. It's that he's the one who always needs to chart a course. There's too much to account for, one step after the next, and he needs to clutch it so hard his fingers ache or he might lose his grip. None of it will matter if he disappears from her, if his mind goes down too many dark tunnels and suddenly she can't follow him. If one day she wakes up and she can't understand him right down to the roots, where his every synapse is going the moment it fires. So Dennis says 'us' and then she reminds him: he's has never had a secret she didn't know already, without ever being told.

His eyes look downward, brow furrowed in thought. She moves in for the kill. 

"Mom and Dad aren't home for another hour."

Dennis presses his lips together, and she knows she has him. He pauses the movie, and Dee lets the folder drop back onto the couch. He lets his muscles unknot, and he helps her out of the brace. For an hour longer, they can feel like a whole person.

\---

High school doesn't go how they plan. It's not the first or last time that's true, but they're young, they're still not used to it yet. Even if they don't fall as far, they hit harder. They feel it more.

Dennis is too short for basketball and too skinny for football, doesn't have the experience to match the kids who have practiced for years. He nearly makes second string for baseball but turns it down, insisting that "Dennis Reynolds isn't anything less than the star player." Adriano Calvanese says he looks more like a ballerina, all bone-skinny and pale. He's the dainty one next to Dee, with her giant hands and the metal cage that creaks and grinds around her when she moves. "It was a smart move to lock that monster up," he says. That turns into 'the Aluminum Monster', which sticks in a way Dee can never get rid of.

It enrages Dee, makes her wonder if she can bull rush him in the back brace. If it really will give her some kind of Hulk-level strength. But she was also ready for this, has heard her share of it for a long time. Part of Dennis is always going to expect an offer for better, even if he plans to turn it down. Dee, though, she's has never had anything she didn't grab with her own hands.

 

It's not like they get it the worst, far from it. There are kids that get bussed in to St. Joseph's from the crappiest parts of South Philly, as part of some education initiative. They come to school already formed into gangs or roving packs, ready to be targets and to fight it with numbers and sheer crazy. 

The group that gets the most attention is called the Freight Train, which Dee guesses is some stupid pun about the bussing, or the other side of the tracks. It's run by a tall, lanky kid with long dark hair that's always falling into his eyes. He stalks around like he's going to shoot a place up someday, trailed by a cagey, mouthy guy who does the talking for him and two idiots that everyone knows are gay together. 

It's because they're in a crowd half the time that they avoid getting too much shit. Even then, they can't always avoid it - sometimes she'll see them bruised up, or walking funny from being strung up by their underwear. No one's ever made Dee eat dirt, or roughed Dennis up after they got a look at her. They're just alone, except for each other. It could always be worse.

\---

"We come from great thinkers," Dennis insists, "our strength is in our minds," and God she hopes he grows out of this dramatic shit. But he turns down Academic Bowl when she suggests it, and his grades aren't good enough for it anyway. He's said 'thinker', but he really means 'talker'. It's a rookie mistake.

Dee comes to him a week later with a flyer for the speech and debate team. It takes just minutes for him to think it was his idea all along.

They enroll in the partner debate categories, and attack each topic with gusto. Dennis is as obsessive with research as he is with anything else. He spends long hours in the student library, pouring over books he only half understands. Dee joins him after a few weeks, preferring his company to time spent at home waiting up for him. They bicker over her short fuse or his nitpicking, but it's time they can spend together, pressed side by side so their marks can brush each other in a comforting electric spark. Miss Clinsky hovers when it gets around closing, and she's a creepy old bitch, but she's nothing compared to their mother. Their mother, who still expects Dennis to thrive.

They don't thrive (they have never _thrived_ ), but they succeed, and that's addictive enough. Dee's take-downs of the other team's points are sharp and scathing. Dennis's research is excellent if only because there's so much of it. That weird, arch voice he does is unsettling, a mind game he's playing mostly on accident. They come away from the semester with a second place trophy and the nickname 'the Murder Twins'. ('Aluminum Monster' sticks harder, to Dee's annoyance.)

It should be enough, but Dee can see the cracks. Maybe it's because she's had years of practice knowing what to look for. It's the quick, wary glances when they enter the room as a pair - from students first, but eventually teachers too. It's how their mother's voice is tighter lately, lingering like an unasked question. Of course that isn't anything new; no one's ever really known what to make of them. It's just that standing out makes everything brighter - highlighting flaws, casting shadows.

She can deal with that, maybe, but her twin... Dennis has always been weak at the crossfire parts of the debate, but he starts to treat them like a personal challenge. There's an unsteady laugh at the corner of his sentences, a hidden anger at being questioned even a little, even when the rules call for it. Dee sees his hands curl and uncurl reflexively on the podium.

She starts pouring through her own files on her brother, mental ones, thinking of solutions. She doesn't expect their instructor to find one first. 

Dee finds Dennis in the library one day, deep into a book of men's monologues. He tries out his choices with her, one by one. (She talks him out of the _Duchess of Malfi_ scene, but it's her favorite.) 

\---

He works on Dramatic Interp scenes, then moves into the theater elective. The teacher does a half-assed job and is drunk most of the time, but Dennis seems revitalized. More important than talent, he has the affect for drama. He's always treated attention like a promise, if he could just figure out how to make it deliver. This suits him. Dee's a little pissed she didn't think of it herself. 

Debate is an after-school thing, so he hasn't forsaken her. But when their prep sessions are cut in half, Dee tries not to be jealous. She knows Dennis will always circle back to her. She can't imagine a world where he saw himself as separate from her. Without the attention he provides she'd starve, but just a little is all she needs. Someday, none of this will matter.

Casting for the musical is announced, and Dennis gets a second-tier part that he insists is his ticket to popularity, the way to set his - their - plans into motion. He throws himself into rehearsing, running lines with Dee that cut deeper into their debate prep, then eclipse it completely as tech week approaches. He's eating less, she notices. ("I want my features to really pop under the stage lights.") Sometimes he eats too much, compulsive grabs of junk food when the littlest things make him nervous. There are shadows under his eyes, which makes him apply extra foundation. He never realizes when he puts on too much. 

Backstage before the show begins, Dee helps him fix it. She blends blush over sharp cheekbones, sweeps a thumb over errant lipstick in the corner of his mouth. They've done this since they were kids if Dennis needed to calm down, if she needed to redirect her anger. An old ritual, a G-rated intimacy where the line between them can safely blur.

"Has Mom been on your ass lately?"

Dee blinks in surprise. She realizes that she hasn't thought about it for a while. "No. I mean, no more than usual."

"She's glad I'm applying myself. Not that she'll be here tonight or anything. But she's talking about getting me an agent if I want it. I told her I'd think about it, but it's - you know, whatever." Dee smooths an uneven patch of foundation, and he leans his cheek against the cool touch of her hand. "Just a little longer, Dee. You'll see."

The rest of the cast is giving them a wide berth, but still, better to be safe. She only kisses his cheek, letting her mouth linger there a few extra seconds. She wonders how long he's thought _he_ was the one protecting _her_.

 

Dennis chokes.

The scene gets to his lines, and he stares out into the audience, the sea of people looking endless under the glare of the lights. Those lights feel hot even from where Dee is standing in the wings. Dennis hangs on his first word, then his second, as she resists the urge to hiss out the rest of the phrase. His eyes are huge; he looks like a lost baby bird.

"Acts like he's playing fucking Hamlet and he can't even deliver," a tech mutters a few feet away. She fights the urge to punch him in the mouth. Dee's stomach is churning in sympathy, and she feels the sudden urge to retch. She clamps her hand down on the name on her arm, the act itself grounding her, whether the mark's involved or not. 

She pushes the feelings down. He eventually finds the words. But the damage is done. Maybe success wouldn't have even made a difference.

Dee thinks that maybe enough is enough.

\---

It's hard to move under the bleachers with the brace on. It's even harder not to be noticed, and she's glad this guy is a second-string dealer at best, not likely to put extra attention on her. Dee hasn't been in real trouble since the thing with Ingrid Nelson.

There's the skinny, stringy-haired kid looking as creepy as ever. There's his friend, not as mouthy today, looking tired in the middle of the day if anything. 

It's that loser couple she's looking for, though. They're chattering, some inane crap about the wrestling team, fat joints held between their fingers. Dee doesn't know shit about this kind of thing, but she thinks you're probably not supposed to use that much of your own product. Whatever. It's not like it matters.

They hear her coming, so they look up in confusion, and then they're goggling. She rolls her eyes, scratching an itch on her arm as the sweat beads under her brace. Fuck, it's hot under here. She hasn't really talked to anyone who isn't Dennis in a while, and just the effort grates against her nerves.

"Uhm. That shit's supposed to calm you down, right? Make everything less crazy? I want one." 

They stare blankly at her, and she sighs hard, taking another step closer. Maybe they'll throw it at her to make her go away, at this rate. "One...pot? Joint. Whatever. How fucking much?" Dennis had better be grateful she was doing this shit for him. 

She can't wait to work out some kind of delivery system, and then she'll never have to see these idiots again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Duchess of Malfi is a Jacobean melodrama about a man who has his twin sister murdered when she remarries. Dee knows that's fucked up. She just doesn't care.
> 
> It took me over a year to write this chapter, mainly because I kept adding to it. Even if I never add anything else to this 'verse, I needed to finish it. But as crap as I am at completing long fic, I also desperately want to give these (very) crazy kids their happy ending. So stay tuned for more, especially since Season 12 is nearly here.


End file.
